The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as “the second American Revolution” ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.

Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on “Real America’s Voice” that the coming “revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right’s efforts to seize power.

Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election “depends” on the “fairness” of the contest and the outcome.

Watch Roberts’ remarks:

https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/1808507354310209711

“We are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back,” declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is “institutionalizing Trumpism” in preparation for a possible victory in November.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    The thing that is upsetting about American fascism is not that it exists.

    It’s the fact that everyone is debating it like an argument about what kind of chairs you want at a wedding.

    It’s the same scenario that played out in 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism … everyone kept arguing that it wouldn’t happen, it’s not like that, it isn’t that bad, they have good points, we can control it, we won’t let them go too far, everyone obeys the rule of law, we have morals …

    … then we all had to literally break the entire world in order to fix the problem.

    • cybermass@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      I couldn’t agree more, the parallel between Nazi Germany and current day America is undeniable

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        4 months ago

        Wonder if the rest of the sane world will have to make a deal with the devil, just not with the Soviets but the Chinese.

        Imagine the Reichstag flag picture with a Chinese flag on the White House. Except everyone is in NBC suits and knows we’ll go extinct in years.

        • kandoh@reddthat.com
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          The American empire is much larger than the territories Germany controlled.

          If the US were to become fascist, it would likely influence South America, Western Europe, the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other regions to follow suit.

          • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            No empire is that powerful … as soon as you think you can control a group of people with violence and fear, you’ve taken the first step to losing control.

            It might work at first and it may even go on for a while but it won’t last.

            It’s not a Hollywood fantasy either … every empire in history started with great power and ended in destruction. It won’t be pretty and it won’t work out as some epic drama but it will end because people everywhere will never stand for it.

    • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I’ve been gently pushing for the same message but at best hear people say “oh it’s just politics, and we have laws against all this so it will be years before anything can truely change”

      Hitler’s power was solidified in a matter of months, whereby he threatened and/or had his political opposition killed. Then he came with the excuse “I don’t believe my people did this”

      No one dared say any of it was against the laws, he was fully above the law and shielded anyone he felt worthy of the same, ofcourse he would have them dissappear when their use ran out…

    • dynamic_generals@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s seeming like a tide of unthinkability bias is awashing the country. Maybe there’s a better word for the phenomenon where one just can’t contemplate what could be a really bad problem. Or if one can, ‘oh but [the grim outcome] is so far down the road…’

    • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s funny how so many democracies seem to be repeating the same tale on a loop. I’ve been reading a lot about the fall of the roman Republic and the parallels are disturbing. A corrupt oligarchical senate/governmental-body and a political leader with influence and military might to take over the government who flouts the law to their own self interest. Of course ceaser was actually competent and trump is well… Trump. It’s just astonishing how our political institutions keep failing us and how the masses keep letting them due to pure exasperation. I have no idea how this sh*t keeps happening. And worst part is I don’t think there’s anything we can do to turn back. The will of the majority is actively undermined and too many are openly brainwashed to be reasoned with.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        To me the cause is simple to understand … a society that allows any individual to attain unlimited and unrestrained wealth and power.

        In a society where anyone is capable of attaining unlimited wealth and power, eventually you will end up with a small group of people or even just one or two individuals with all the power and control. That was the lesson that the creators of the game ‘Monopoly’ tried to teach. If you build a game where only one person can win by gaining so much wealth that they can buy everything, then everyone must lose in order for one to win.

        It’s the same scenario and cause that corrupted the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Persians, the Mughals, the Islamic Caliphates, the British … they all rose with great wealth that eventually became concentrated to ever smaller groups of people until there was so much wealth at the top and none at the bottom that the system failed and it was reset again and again and again. We are just living through another cycle of wealth being concentrated to smaller groups of people again.

        The problem is not that we keep looking for a system or a government that can control people … it’s that every one of us believes that we can be capable of winning the entire game by making everyone else lose.

        Place a wealth cap on society and then we might able to see more people around the world wanting to cooperate on a few things. And when I say wealth cap, I don’t mean a few thousand or even a million dollars … I mean a wealth cap of $10 million dollars … anyone who has control to more than that is either taxed fully or not allowed to participate in business. No billionaires, no muti level millionaires. It would automatically spread wealth to so many people everywhere. It wouldn’t cause a utopia either, we’ll probably still have the same problems as before but there would be many more people with the resources, ability and finances to be able to do something about everything.

  • theprogressivist @lemmy.worldOP
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    Scheppele’s assessment echoed that of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which warned in an analysis published late last year that “the entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the ‘real’ community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent.”

    “Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and ‘replacing American values,’” the analysis said. “Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism.”

    For the love of everything we care for. Please vote this November.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      But I’m just so undecided. I mean, yeah, that sounds bad, really bad, but Biden is old and had one bad performance. Forget all the other recent events where he did well, I’m only able to focus on that one bad one. /s

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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        The Heritage Foundation existed for a very long time, and many far-right evangelicals wanted to take over the US. They played a long game. They even sunk 1 billion dollars into the whole project, and needed to learn from some other countries like Hungary and Russia. At least the HF has a lot of ties to the Orbán regime of Hungary, our only luck is it’s on slow burn thanks to the EU.

    • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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      It’s far too late to vote our way out of this, Trump will be president next year because the Democrats would rather lose an election than a fundraising opportunity.

      Start preparing for the inevitable. If you and your friend circle aren’t ready to engage in mass civil unrest like the French do whenever their government acts up then it’s time to get that way. Form an affinity group, practice acting in concert while in black bloc, study police tactics, surveil the local fascist agitators, join a worker’s union, identify opportunities to disrupt business-as-usual, and most importantly, do not organize online.

      • jumjummy@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        People like you are the problem. You’re just spewing nonsense. This is ABSOLUTELY the time to vote.

        • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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          I didn’t say not to vote, just that it’s too late to fix this with electoralism. If you feel compelled to do so then please do, we have to embrace a diversity of tactics if we’re to have any impact on the national stage.

  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    And where…

    THE FUCK…

    Is the FBI?

    If that’s not a terroristic threat, then what is?

  • azimir@lemmy.ml
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    And your God emperor is signalling bloodshed if we let you do it.

    You don’t negotiate or compromise with Nazis like the Project 2025 people.

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      Basically they’re saying, “Shut up and take it or we’ll kill you.” That is not a political platform. It’s extra-Overton. It’s domestic enemy-making.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      I really hope we call it what it is this time around.

      We got some pretty grave consequences on the books for treason, and I think they might be just about the only thing that can start to put this fire out.

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        It won’t happen. Biden has already said he won’t do anything. It’s ridiculous. Hopefully people like Sanders will get the ball rolling. At least he’s making noise.

        • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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          It looks and feels like everyone is waiting out what happens in November and with it what happens in January… (There might not even be an inauguration in January, Trump might begin his day 1 dictatorship right after he claims winning the elections, and has his goons to support him)

          Everybody that matters now is frozen from acting untill past the election, while imo now should be the time to intervene and not let it roll onwards, remove one of the chess pieces now and the momentum might not be unstoppable.

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “If you don’t fight back, we’ll let you live” For now. Make no mistake about scorpions though.

  • killea@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Not only are they in the process of openly subverting the Constitution of the United States, they are openly calling for violence. When declared powerful adversaries call for violence publicly, every option is on the table. Collective self defense may be necessary, and they may yet regret it.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This country is so fucked. Much of the culture is checked out; a lot of the left/liberal movement seem to be up its own asshole in goofy pandering that seems designed to only churn out more donnie voters, and the cons are making plans, and basically announcing them to everyone.

    Also, I’ll vote Biden no matter what this fall, but the Democratic Party had better seriously consider removing him and selecting someone else. Otherwise, Biden’s chief legacy that is actually remembered will be helping to enable the dismantling of this country by being so egotistical as to think he’s the only one that could beat donnie in 2024.

    • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      It’s not Biden, it’s the DNC’s primary voters. They elected the guy, not once, but twice, maybe because he actually does a decent job and beat Don last time. There was a primary this year, I voted in it, there was more than one candidate (though I would have preferred even more), Biden actually lost a primary in American Samoa. I voted for him though, he was clearly the best of the options, nobody else even remotely competitive stepped up to be president.

      • Zombie-Mantis@lemmy.world
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        Just once, there wasn’t a real primary this year. All the alternate frontrunners (Newsone, Whitimer, Butigeg, etc.) stayed out of the race, following the lead of the Party and letting Joe run virtually unopposed.

        Very few people, if anyone, took any of the other candidates as anything more than protests to pressure the Biden campaign into turning left.

        • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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          That’s a “real primary”. A democratic process doesn’t mean you’ll like all the options, just that anybody is welcome to participate and become an option if they want and you can vote for them if you want. Few people ran because there was no reason to run, they already had a very strong candidate. But if they’d won the primary vote, they would have replaced Biden. I don’t say my city elections aren’t “real elections” because only one or two people run for a position, that’s just who showed up, it’s as real an election as any other.

          If you are knowledgeable about how US elections work, you know that if you vote for somebody in the primary and they win the general, they will probably be the primary winner/default pick for the next cycle too since it gives them an advantage. If they fuck up badly enough, somebody else can beat them in the next primary, it’s happened before.

      • rsuri@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yeah the thing I really can’t understand is why did the voters pick Biden in 2016? Even on the moderate side of the party there were much better choices. The democratic voters who just seem to pick the name they’re most familiar with - Clinton, Biden - those are the people who made Trump happen.

        I think the majority of Democratic voters just assume the most familiar name is the most electable in the general, but as we’ve seen that’s simply not the case. Ironically, if it feels like Democrats run the worst candidates against Trump, that’s probably not an accident. Trump makes Democratic voters pick the “safest” candidate, who turns out to be the least electable.

        • immutable@lemm.ee
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          Back in 2016 the voters actually weren’t super excited about Biden either.

          Biden did pretty badly in the first 3 primaries

          Feb 3rd in Iowa he came in 4th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, and Warren.

          Feb 11th in New Hampshire he came in 5th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren.

          Feb 22nd in Nevada he came in 3rd place behind Sander and Warren.

          After these pretty awful results there was a brief period when Sanders was considered the front runner and the DNC shit a brick. You might recall Chris Matthews on MSNBC speculating wildly about a Sanders presidency meaning “executions in Central Park” that was February 8th.

          Biden was thrown a life line though by Jim Clyborn who strongly supported him and gave him his first victory in South Carolina on February 29th. A state that would go on to vote trump on Election Day.

          This strong showing though was enough for the DNC to see a way to have a moderate candidate win the primary. If they could get the moderate candidates, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Biden to stop splitting that voting block they could stop a more progressive candidate like Sanders or Warren from taking the nomination. Internally the DNC feared that a more progressive candidate would win the primary and lose in the general and wanted a safer option.

          The day before Super Tuesday when 15 states would hold their primaries, the more moderate candidates reached an agreement. Buttigieg and Klobuchar announced they would drop out of the race and throw their support behind Biden. In the days before these announcement polling showed Sanders likely to win a plurality of the Super Tuesday delegates. After the moderate candidates lined up behind Biden he won 10 of the 15 contests, losing California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont to Sanders and American Samoa to Bloomberg.

          Buttigieg would be rewarded with his current position as Secretary of Transportation and Klobuchar would end up Chair of the Senate Rules Committee (although it’s less clear how much that was because of her dropping out).

          With a victorious Super Tuesday the media rallied around Biden’s amazing reversal of fortune and the Chris Matthews of the world finally had a light at the end of the tunnel for the horrors of a Sanders presidency, line up behind Joe.

          An interesting foot note is that of the states holding primaries on Super Tuesday, of the 10 that went for Biden, 6 (7 if you count Maine but I wouldn’t) would go on to vote for trump on Election Day, Alabama, Arkansas, 1 of 4 of Maine’s votes, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. All the states carried by Sanders, except Utah, reliably voted for Biden in the general.

          So the DNC, worried about losing the general election, rallied their moderate candidates around Biden, who was losing fairly badly. His overperformance in states that would ultimately vote Republican ended up changing the narrative enough that he became presumptive nominee status on the eyes of the media. This status became generally accepted on April 8th when Sanders pulled out of the race, but you can find the media pushing this in March

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        That’s just it, though - because he decided to run again, and is an incumbent, very few challenged him.

      • Dr. Bluefall@toast.ooo
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        Do you believe, in any measure, that Biden would use the power the latest rulings give him?

        Even if we assume he did, what would stop the current Supreme Court from just drawing a chalk outline around the exact thing he did, calling it unofficial, and then charging him anyway?

        The ruling was made to empower Trump, and those that puppeteer him. No one else.

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    Dear President Biden, you have sworn an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. SCOTUS has given you cover to do almost literally anything you need to do to fulfill that oath. This is what a domestic enemy looks and sounds like. In fact, this is a target rich environment, Mr. President. Please, get off your ass and get to work.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      Yeah, this isn’t some fringe extremists they can pretend are outside the movement. The Heritage Foundation IS the movement. They’re “respectable” conservatives, transformed by Trumpism into full blown terrorists.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    By all means, let’s just sit around and wait?

    I really hope an attempt to overthrow our government is met with the terrifying force of our military. This shits been outta hand for too long.

    • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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      I think it’s somewhat arrogant to assume that the state violence apparatus is wholly on our side on this one.

      1. What kinds of people do you think staff the military and police, LBGT activists and climate protesters?
      2. For those not on the MAGA train but are perhaps “uncommitted”, being ordered to fire on Americans may be a bridge too far.

      The military will likely fracture like everything else in such a scenario. I imagine desertion, theft of equipment, and sabotage would all be huge problems until things more neatly sort themselves into “us” and “them.”

      • Tinidril@midwest.social
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        4 months ago

        The military leadership is deeply neoliberal. They are definitely not leftist, but aren’t fans of Trump and MAGA either. However, expect Trump to start replacing them as soon as he takes office.

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        Our country would be completely and permanently overthrown on the international stage the moment that happens. China and Russia will own the world, and America will be left in ruins. A civil war will make us incredibly weak, and the rest of the world probably isn’t going to fight for us when that happens.

        There’s a chance we’ll be literally overthrown too, especially if we leave (or are expelled from) NATO.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      Or those who simply enjoy contemplating the violence. Like, dang it, the Left capitulated, but are you sure we can’t kill just a few of them for uh… “demonstration” purposes?